


Comparative Theology

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Digger (Comic)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 13:38:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13055079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: "If God did not exist, it would have been necessary for man to invent one."A man, a girl, a wombat, and a demon pray, or try praying, to four different gods.





	Comparative Theology

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EcclesCake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EcclesCake/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, EcclesCake! You mentioned you hadn't read the comic in a while; I hope this still makes sense.
> 
> Edit: Sweet baby Jesus, somehow I left in a placeholder name. I'm so sorry. Fixed now!

Everyone assumed that the god of Jhalm’s childhood was a war god.

It wasn’t unreasonable. The Veiled were a martial order by nature; and a fair number of them first found faith at the feet of warlike gods: gods of protection and of honor, gods of duty and necessity. Not all such gods kept their own orders of paladins and crusaders, and some such orders had higher standards than the Veiled, or different ones, or had no room for the broader and more complicated faith the Veiled allowed. Thus their congregations came to the Veiled. And Jhalm was a warlike man, and wore the duties of battle like an old uniform; he did not begrudge the assumption. But the principal god of his childhood and the first in his heart was Teshia of the Hearth.

Her temple was built of low red brick and lined in beds of low sweet-smelling herbs. Later in life, Jhalm revisited the temple and learned of the great wars of attrition that Teshia’s priests fought over the herb beds: the Invasive Plant Debates, the Three Or Possibly Four Basil Varietals, and the Mint Idiot, who planted mint in the _ground_ to run riot over the temple. But as a child he’d always found the gardens peaceful, and he’d loved taking home the sacred packages each worshiper was given, leaves from Teshia’s garden dried over the sacred Hearthflame. He used to press the twists of burlap to his nose and inhale something both delicious and sacred. Once one of the priests caught him at it: Cassandra of the straight gray braids and straight-pressed robes. Jhalm jumped, squeaking, and shoved the herbs into his bag. She laughed, and muffled it.

“What are you afraid of, Jhalm?” she asked, crossing the temple to sit on the low stone wall. Jhalm gulped.

“Uh,” he said. She folded her hands together and smiled, waiting.

“No one else sniffs the herbs,” he said. “Is it… against the rules?” She’d scolded him mightily for flouting the rules about climbing in the trees outside the temple.

She smiled. “No, it isn’t.”

“Oh.” Jhalm glanced down at the bag. She reached out and opened it, fishing out the packet. She pressed it into his hands.

“Not everything unusual is against the rules,” she said. “Rules exist to keep people safe, and to keep the town safe. And some rules may not make sense to you, become some dangers are very complicated. But these aren’t dangerous, and no one is hurt if you enjoy how they smell. They are meant to be eaten and enjoyed. If other people don’t take the time to enjoy them, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. It just means you enjoy them differently. That isn’t wrong.”

“Oh.” He shifted from foot to foot. Slowly he lifted the packet to his face and took another breath of basil and thyme. Softly he said, “It feels… holy. Is it supposed to?”

She settled her hand on top of his head. “Yes,” she said. “They are the work of the sacred hearth, as much as the sacred bread and meat, and are given to the goddess’s devoted. If they allow you a glimpse of Teshia, then that is nothing but good. Remember that.”

He didn’t think about it for long, that afternoon; he had a baby sister and a cat waiting for him at home, and a new ball, and all of them were far more interesting than gods. But when he took oath to the Veiled, he carried a package of sacred herbs in his bedroll. There was nothing shameful about it; the Veiled took oaths of obedience to all gods equally, but the order knew better than to ask for perfect evenness in love. Jhalm found other favorites — he had a particular fondness for Baba Yaga of the North, who was only rarely worshiped as a goddess but never granted any follower more or less than they deserved — but he never forgot Teshia, whose temple had sheltered his home.

After he and Murai left the Temple of Ganesh, with the wombat Digger free and god-touched behind them, Jhalm sat at the edge of the camp in the dark and turned a package of herbs between his fingers. He lifted it to his face and breathed it in. Thyme again, and rosemary, tinged with sweat and leather from the years they’d spent at the bottom of his pack.

Teshia was not a goddess of death, or great and horrible deeds, or terrible tests of wisdom and honor. If he had wished to avoid those things, he should have sworn himself to her service, and been free of old unhappy buried things. He had not wished.

But she was also a good god to have in the wake of one’s mistakes. He breathed in the leaves, and closed his eyes. _O Goddess of the sweetest smoke, keep safe this hearth, keep safe this home. Let our food be plentiful and good; let those we love draw close to us; let our fire burn enduring through all the winter winds. Let our foolishness and pride be fuel for the fire; let our anger and hurt blow away with the smoke. Let us greet each other with joy in the firelight, and O Teshia, be with us at this hearth till dawn._

* * *

Self-respecting wombats don’t pray.

It’s not like there are rules about it. A wombat with theological leanings doesn’t grow up hearing “You stop that praying, now, or you can give up those dreams of being a deputy supervisor!” Prayer is personal business, and wombats generally leave personal business alone. And you do get the occasional prayerful wombat, although usually it’s not so much an outpouring of devotion so much as someone thinking “Well, it doesn’t hurt to be polite, even to gods.” And there’s a few odd historical figures who a more spiritual species might call saints, although wombats generally assumed that that any architectural eurekas at the tomb of Honored Foreman Glorious-Geometry came about because the tomb is such a fine showcase for the principles of engineering.

But wombats, by and large, have better sense and better things to do than bother gods. Digger grew up with a faith in muscles, hard work, basic decency, and a good solid arch or triangle shape, none of which appreciated votive candles. And although matters with the dead and inefficiently-tortured god left an impression, it wasn’t exactly one of divine inspiration.

Digger thus found herself at something of a loss.

“Hello?” she mumbled. She had a little statue of an elephant – well, she had a toy, but something about the angle of the trunk reminded her of her friend. She’d put it next to a candle. Unfortunately, she’d gotten the candle out of a discount bin, so it was lopsided and very bright orange.

“Lord Ganesh?” she tried, folding her claws in front of her. “Er. Hello. It’s me again. Do you think you could send a message on to the statue, please?”

There was no response. She’d gathered this was a fairly normal response to prayer, so… it might still be working? Digger sighed. You didn’t have these sorts of problems with holes. There wasn’t a hole and then there was. If it wasn’t working, you were probably on sand, and could tell.

“Hello, statue,” she offered to her tiny elephant. “Er, the other statue, not this one. I just wanted to… well, say hello! Let you know I made it home safe. I’m living with my parents again, but it’s not so bad. They really thought I was dead. I’m going to get tired of the velvet-glove treatment eventually, but right now it’s… kind of nice, actually.” She sighed, dropping to a cross-legged seat in front of the shelf. “I’m not good at this praying business. I’m doing it backwards anyway, aren’t I? But I miss you, all of you, and I thought I might as well give it a shot.” She sighed. “I think I’ll be fine eventually. I was a little worried it was all going to be too different, after everything, but I’m starting to settle in again. I’m not the person I was when I left, but that happens sometimes. People take courses in other warrens, or go have a short marriage and come back different.” Her claws drummed against the ground.

“It’s hard to talk about it,” she said. “Obviously my family doesn’t know much about… killing gods, or crazy monk girls with destinies — I mean, they’ve met people like that, but not, you know. Gone on quests with them.” Depended on them; failed them and let them fall; been saved by them. Not by monk girls trailing destiny like a smell soaked into their clothes, or name-eating hyenas who tried to kill you and then adopted you, or inquisitive innocent little demon-shadows who suddenly turned older than you’d ever been. “And I thought, you know, this is part of what people use gods for, right? Not that I want to use a god. I never want the gods tangled up in my life again. But you’re a statue, not really a god, and… you’re my friend. So I figured – worth a try, right?”

The figurine didn’t say anything. If the Statue of Ganesh at the far end of Manuel’s strange and twisting ways heard anything, or said anything, his voice didn’t reach to Digger.

“Not one of my better ideas,” she muttered, and blew out the candle. She reached for the stub, and then paused, looking at the little spatter of wax on the candestick and the tusky little smile on the face of the elephant. She sighed, and nudged them a little bit closer to the center of the shelf.

* * *

_Black Mother, pass us by — turn your face away from us — we are not here, we are not here —_

Murai didn’t need the prayer. It was only twilight, and the camp of the Veiled was only lightly touched by only dull and gentle shadows. She was as sane as she ever was anymore; her hands were steady, her steps sure, and no strange light edged her sword. Still, the words echoed in her head.

She sighed. They were in safe, well-traveled woods; they might still be at the edge of the hyenas’ hunting grounds, but Murai rather thought she had safe passage. She waved at one of the sentries and made her way into the forest, looking for a quiet place between the trees. She’d always liked walking as a meditative tradition.

“Black Mother…” she whispered, passing under one of the moss-covered branches. The Black Mother was a localized goddess; Murai might be the farthest-flung of all the people who’d invoked her. Then again, maybe not; refugee children rarely had short or easy journeys. But she was a strange goddess to invoke in this green and peaceful place.

If a god could feel regret — could hide underground for twelve thousand years, suffocating in his own shame — what might have happened to the Black Mother? She had been born already guilty, born out of children’s baffled desperation; had she come into being fully formed at the shore and already known her past? Or had she — in her own perspective — lived her brief life, come to Saltlace on the paths of the moon with no idea what awaited her, walked beside the Good Man, killed him?

Murai had been better at the hand-to-hand combat than the comparative theology, and this was the sort of question they saved for the advanced course. But she rather thought that faith had grafted the Black Mother onto time, given her a life at the far end of the moonlit road and her own journey in the river city. Because of the belief of desperate children, hundreds of years ago she had walked the city’s pilings, run her fingers over the goods at the market-stalls, watched with narrowed eyes as the people of the city turned to her son like flowers toward the light. No story Murai ever heard had said much more than “jealousy and rage” about how she came to turn on him. The children hadn’t bothered. They were used to grown-ups doing cruel and senseless sudden things.

What had she done after she killed her son? Was there a chance she had gone down under the waves and tried to bind herself in the kelp? Might she someday?

Murai sat down hard on a nearby stump, crushing a mushroom. “Black Mother…” she whispered.

She had only briefly glimpsed the goddess, a shadowy figure haunting the shoreline under the docks. The Black Mother had glided over the flotsam, kicking aside the reeking fish, which had fallen rotten from the bones in her wake. The moon had shone on the soaked wood of the docks, and on the iridescent oil washed up on the sand, and the goddess had seen Murai, and screamed, and reached up to push back her hood —

Murai shivered, pressing her hands on the warm damp wood beneath her. She tilted her face up to the sun, closing her eyes; her eyelids turned the world into a comforting dull darkness, faintly red.

A god could be bound, and trapped, and killed, and given mercy. Could a dead god — a god whose story called for him to die — be brought back? Could a goddess of pain and anger and betrayal be redeemed, or somehow purified, or perhaps forgiven?

“Good Man, who left on the moon road,” Murai whispered, “I pray to you, forgive your other mother. Let her go. Good Man, who died at the shore, rest easy, and let your grief die with you. Black Mother, who I fear, who broke me — I forgive you. Tell me where you are, and if I can, I will bring you relief from pain.”

Something rippled through the world. Something glinted like a fish-scale in the deepest shadows of the leaves. Then it was gone.

Murai sighed, rubbing at her eyes. The Black Mother wasn’t the dead hyena-god. He-Is had not been worshiped in millenia, though the hyenas had kept the memory of him alive. Without the myth he might have dissipated, forgotten, and never needed them. The Black Mother was a live story, and it might not be possible to change her nature while the faith of bitter frightened children fed her and made her real. Maybe if Murai wanted to help the goddess, she’d first have to make all of Saltlace’s lost children safe.

Well. She stood up from the stump, dusting her hands off on the side of her robe. It was always good to have goals in life.

* * *

The Shadow drifted in a narrow place between stars.

It felt like it ought to think of itself as the Shadow-something, but it hadn’t come up with another word yet. It didn’t feel much like a child anymore, with the scraps of Sweetgrass-Voice tangled up in its mind, but it wasn’t sure what else to be.

It was hurting horribly.

It had found a friend, of sorts — another demon, who had seemed only a little older than it felt. The other demon had had shadows that rippled at its border like dappled leaves, and had seemed willing to listen to Shadowchild’s mad ideas: thoughts of wombats and hyenas and courage, of things that talk and things which _might_ talk and things who would starve if you questioned all the rabbits. Of what it meant to be kind.

The demon with the dappled border had listened for a long time, and smiled, and made encouraging noises in the language of demons, which wasn’t exactly a language and didn’t exactly have noises, and then it had coiled itself around the Shadow and gone for the ———. (In wombats and hyenas, the —— would probably be the throat. Or maybe the liver.)

The Shadow wouldn’t die. It was pretty sure. Demons are hard to kill, and the fight was complicated and strange, but it was here and the dappled shadow wasn’t. It wouldn’t die. It was only hurting.

Sweetgrass-Voice had thought a lot about prayer. Sweetgrass-Voice thought it was a pointless, stupid, useful thing; it was easy to sneak into a praying mind, to make your whisper sound like an answer. To take advantage of weak and vulnerable fool. Sweetgrass-Voice had thought a lot of things were stupid and useful and weak.

The Shadow picked a star to be up and tilted its head back.

“Lord Ganesh?” it tried. “You might remember me. I was afraid of your temple, but you were friends with my mother. And you’re compassionate. Do you listen to demons if they pray?”

If Ganesh answered, the Shadow didn’t hear. It sighed, as much as you can sigh without lungs in a place without air.

“She-Is-Fiercer?” it tried. “You don’t know me, but your people adopted my mother. And I killed someone who hurt you once. I ate him. That makes him part of me, now,” it added, bowing its head. “He talked. That’s what happens when you eat something that talks. I understand about the funerals now.” It sighed. “You probably don’t like that he’s part of me. But, She-Is-Fiercer, are you there? Do you listen to demons if they talk to you?”

No words, fierce or comforting, made it to the narrow place between the stars. The Shadow sighed.

You could invent gods, if you needed them badly enough. If you needed and prayed and believed, sooner or later all that faith ate a hole in the universe and a god was born to fill it. Sweetgrass-Voice had seen it happen, before He-Is and She-Is, and had heard it again in its long seething captivity under the earth. If enough people needed and believed.

The Shadow was the only one here who needed anything. But it was already a sort of apostle of something, wasn’t it? Of kindness, and of caring what you eat, and the good sense of wombats. It was the only demon who believed in any of those things either.

“To the god of demons who want to try to be kind,” the Shadow said. It paused. “O, God of Demons Who Try to Be Kind. O Kind Demon. Demon of Kindness.” That sounded better. “O Demon of Kindness,” it tried. “Um, hail?” Well, it wasn’t bad for a first try.

“Demon of Kindness,” the Shadow prayed. “You don’t exist yet, but you will. Give me strength, please. Make me brave. Make me hurt less, or make it easier. Please?”

The god who didn’t exist yet didn’t answer, but that was all right. It would listen once it was real.

The Shadow stretched out its limbs in the starlight. It ached, and it was tired, and in a way, it was as alone as it had been. But the Demon of Kindness would hear someday. Maybe it would get another name, a better name. Maybe this would do.

The Shadow slipped down the starbeams and back to the world.


End file.
